It's finally caught up to me.  Being late.

I'm so late today, I am going to miss my flight.

I will not let myself think this though although it's too late.  I'm so late, I am going to miss my flight, I type in a text.
It's a cold day, 50 degrees with no clouds and a clear sky.  Wind gusts devil dead and brittle leaves in circles on the street, the sidewalk and in front of where I sit.  I wait for the Red Line to take me to the airport. 

Negative thinking brings a negative reality about.  I know, I know, I know.  What we think we are one step away from creating.  But I cannot help myself.  This time, I've really done it, I tell myself.   This time I'm so late I am going to miss an important flight to an important place and I am so freaked out by the "being late enough to miss a flight," I am about to cry.

And here's the deal. I should not be late.  I was up at five, I had hours to get this right, I got my kids to school and had an hour plus to spare.  I choreographed the whole out too.  That's what former TV news producers do.  They are careful with time and while I have a habit of packing my hours tight, never letting a minute of fat slip through, I have never timed things this close. 

My plan was so simple:  Walk to train, catch train, arrive hour early.  I thought I would get to the train in fifteen minutes but somehow it took me thirty and then I missed the train.
And so I did what I never allow myself to do.  I panicked.  I texted my fear of doom to my new love, just for a bit of sweet southern reassurance, which he was fast to give.  But then I went a step further and asked advice from my "former," the father of the kids because he's a guy who catches two planes a week and knows how to make it work.

"How tight have you cut a Southwest flight," I asked.
"Fifteen minutes," he texted back.
 "I've get less than 30," I text.
 "Plenty of time," he writes.

I'm on the train at this point, breathing.  In, out, in, out and I tug out a book by Larry Brooks, Story Engineering.  I read because I have a class to teach in a few days and I need to read this book.  So I read and pretend I'm not losing my fricking mind.
 ~  

The airport is a mess.  Security lines so far back and so packed with people, I assess and decide to take the shorter check point which means I'll also have to run twice as far.  I have strong legs.  It's fine.  The security lanes are jammed and this is my moment. 

I am now a homeless person.  I am one of the people I see every single day.  I am a person who needs other people to help me.  I mean, I-really-need-help.  I'm desperate. I cannot miss my flight.

I am not crying but I am damn close.

It takes me almost ten minutes to work it out in my head.  “Ask for help,” I tell myself.  “No, no, it’s too much of a hassle, I don’t want to bother these people,” I tell myself back.  “ASK FOR HELP,” I tell myself again.  “If you don’t, you will miss your flight.”

So I swallow my pride and ask.  I am tentative at first, "Can I move forward in front of you?  I really need help."

The lady wears a pink sweater.  She smiles and says, “Of course.”

I ask a man who wears a sweater vest.  “Is it okay?”

“Sure,” he says.

Like the Red Sea, the lines simply part and I am at the security checkpoint and through and getting scanned and I'm telling you there was an hour of waiting in that line.  There had to be three hundred people and they all made way.  They all said, "no problem, of course, you bet."

As I ran, barefooted through the airport, cutting my feet on the metal of the moving sidewalk and barely able to breathe, people moved.  One man called out, "you can do it.  Go. Go. Go."

And I ran as I have never run before.  I ran and ran and it was a poem by Sharon Old's that came into my mind.  The poem about running to catch a flight to see her dying father and how she got on the plane with a second to space and then wept the way the dead weep when they realize they have made it into heaven.  "With massive relief."

I made it to the gate.  Heart pounding.  Breath in ragged, hot, dry gulps.  Bare feet on fire.  I stood on line, in my spot with my ticket and pulled my flip flops out of my bag.  I dropped them on the ground and slid my feet in and gave mountains of thanks for the kindness and generosity of everyone who got me to the flight on time.

I asked for help.  Finally.

After all these years of going my life pretty much alone and pretty much terrified, I asked for help and got it.  It was so easy and yet, so horribly hard.  All around me, there was help.